As far as the corporate media narratives are concerned, we are only allowed to hold one of two possible opinions about the George Floyd killing in 2020. On the one hand, there is the position that George Floyd was a saintly man who died as a result of a racism-inspired attack by police officer Derek Chauvin. Moreover, Chauvin deliberately killed Floyd, and is thus guilty of murder. On the other side is the position that George Floyd was a monster who only died because he was a drug user. Chauvin, a saintly public servant, was merely trying to restrain a dangerous criminal—i.e., Floyd—who was in the process of stealing from a local merchant. Chauvin was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time since Floyd just happened to die while Chauvin was kneeling on this neck. This was bad luck for Chauvin who did absolutely nothing wrong. 

Those are your two media-approved choices. The first narrative, of course, is the standard leftwing position promoted by the likes of CNN pundits. On the other side are FoxNews pundits like Tucker Carlson. 

Neither narrative describes the actual situation, however. 

This is important again because Carlson has recently taken to claiming that "the whole George Floyd story was a lie."  This claim is based on Carlson's theory that Floyd could not have been killed by Chauvin because Floyd had various illegal drugs in his system. 

But is the whole George Floyd story a lie? Certainly some parts of the story are undeniably true. It is well established that Chauvin chose to use a neck restraint defined as "deadly force" by the police themselves. It is well established that Chauvin did this in spite of the fact that Floyd was already handcuffed and the police had no reason to interpret Floyd's lack of cooperation as a threat to the police or the public. These facts were attested to by police personnel during Chauvin's trial.